propositions press

SHoP, justseeds, ivaw: printing views and conversation this weekend

Two events this Saturday, December 3, one in Chicago, one in New York, both have to do with printing, with contributions from me.

In Chicago, South Side Projections will be screening Typeface, the Kartemquin documentary about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. April Sheridan of CBPA put together a small show of letterpress work to go along with the film. I'll be bringing a couple of pieces to show. Plus, there will be a roundtable discussion after the film on the history and future of letterpress. Respondents include film director Justine Nagan, April Sheridan, Martha Chiplis of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Celene Aubrey of the Lillstreet Art Center, and me.

Event starts at 7 pm, but the venue, SHoP, will have activity going all afternoon, too.

5638 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, Illinois

Full details on the SHoP website.

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The New York event is the reception for the brand new War Is Trauma print portfolio from Justseeds and IVAW. I'm proud to say, not only did I contribute a print to this collection, but I helped Nicolas Lampert and Sgt. Aaron Hughes print the portfolio covers on my SP-15. We did it on Combat Paper, no less.

7 - 10pm
@ Booklyn, 37 Greenpoint Ave. 4th Floor,                                                                                    Brooklyn, New York

The show will be up from December 3, 2011 - January 8, 2012. Full details on the Justseeds blog.

The portfolio is a terrific collection of thirty-some prints by a combination of Justseeds artists,

Josh MacPhee (Brooklyn)
Mary Tremonte (Pittsburgh)
Kevin Caplicki (Brooklyn)
Chris Stain (Queens)
Thea Gahr (Portland, OR)
Bec Young (Pittsburgh)
Erik Ruin (Philadelphia)
Pete Yahnke (Albuquerque)
Alec Dunn (Portland, OR)
Colin Matthes (Milwaukee)
Nicolas Lampert (Milwaukee)
Jesse Purcell (Montreal)
Roger Peet (Portland, OR)
Molly Fair (Brooklyn),
Santiago Armengod (Mexico City)
Shaun Slifer (Pittsburg)
Dylan AT Miner (E. Lansing)

 IVAW artists,

Drew Cameron (Army Veteran, Vermont)
Joyce Wagner (Marine Veteran, Pittsburgh)
Aaron Hughes (IL Army National Guard Veteran, Chicago)
Jeremy Bergren (Marine Veteran, North Carolina)
Peter Sullivan (IL Army National Guard Veteran, Chicago)
Chris Arendt (MI Army National Guard Veteran, Michigan)
Malachi Muncy (TX Army National Guard Veteran, Texas)
Ash Kyrie (WI Army National Guard Veteran, Wisconsin)

and a handful of invited "allies" of those two organizations: 

Bay Area Civilian Soldier Alliance: Siri Margerin and Nave Fortin 
Michael Rakowitz (Chicago)
Marshall Weber (Booklyn Artists Alliance, Brooklyn, NY)
Harrell Fletcher and Transformazium with Brettiny Hucks
Gayla Jean Clemons
Deon Archie
Deshon LeGrand (Portland, OR / Braddock, PA)
Temporary Services (Chicago, Philadelphia, Copenhagen)

And me, as a late addition to the allies list. Nicolas called me up to see if I could make a 16x12 print in an edition of 130 less than three weeks before the deadline. Of course I had to say yes! 

china drift, initial itinerary!

Pasted below is the schedule of events for our China Drift, with plenty of middle dates yet to be filled in. They will be; we'll be having some announced events in both Wuhan and Chongqing. Many thanks to the HomeShop crew for their fabulous organizing and networking skills. Stay tuned!

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大陆漂流 . 中国 Continental Drift China

2011年5月18日至2011年6月5日
18 May �C 5 June 2011

“大陆漂流.中国”活动将众多的艺术家，策展人，理论家，与活动家召集到一起，共同探索当 代地理政治转化对于公共框架与亲密生存 空间的影响。在一周的时间里，本活动将“漂”在北京，尝试将抽象分析（经济，社会学，都市生活研究，美学等等）直接导入不同的艺术实践当中。通过报告，工 作坊，讨论会与实地考察等方式，我们希望自己能在闹市与乡间的穿梭中构建一个充满欢乐，感觉试验，偶遇与思考的游历方式。

The Continental Drift China brings together artists, curators, theorists, and activists to explore the impacts that current geopolitical transformations are having on the public frameworks and intimate environments of existence. For one week, the roving seminar will drift through Beijing, endeavouring to bring abstract analysis (economics, sociology, urbanism, aesthetics, etc.) into direct contact with situated projects. By way of presentations, a workshop, discussion sessions and site visits, the project provides a movement through space thriving on conviviality, perceptual experimentation, unexpected encounters and informed travel in both metropolitan and rural settings. 
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本次大陆漂流活动由 "我们家” 青年自治中心，“家作坊”，“哪里哪里”策展联盟，与“罗盘”（美国中西部激进 文化走廊）等组织共同合作举办。

The Continental Drift China is developed by Desireè Youth Autonomy Center, HomeShop and the Where Where Curatorial Collective, in conjunction with Compass (of the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor).

活动安排 SCHEDULE
欲知所列每项活动的细节，请看本安排表下的具体内容。请注意不是所有的活动都在同一 场所，活动地址安排如下：
For detailed descriptions of each of the events listed, please see below. Note that not all events are at the same location; addresses are listed accordingly.

星期一 monday	星期二 tuesday	星期三 wednesday	星期四 thursday	星期五 friday	星期六 saturday	星期天 sunday
			19 “合辑”，底特律音乐人类学赏析，王念华主讲 “Selections”, an evening of musical anthropology led by Dan S. WANG 晚上7点开始 地点：家作坊，东城区交道口北二条8号 Thursday, 19 May, 19.00 HomeShop; Dongcheng District,Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8	20 “大陆漂流”漂去天津Continental Drift to Tianjin	21 杨先让（艺术家， 曾任中央美术学院民间美术系主任）讲座 a Talk with Professor YANG Xianrang, artist and former head of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Folk Arts and Crafts department 具体时间待定 地点：家作坊，东城区交道口北二条8号 Exact time to be confirmed HomeShop;Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8 “西�[计划”艺术假扮旅行社简单开张 “Journey West” Travel Agency performative soft opening 5下午4点开始  钟楼湾胡同41号  Saturday, 21 May, 16.00 41Zhonglouwan Hutong (next door to The Drum and Bell Bar)	22 《北二条小报》自办出版工作坊 Beiertiao Leaksself-publishing workshop 5月22－23日，周六到周一，早上10点开始直到印刷完毕 10.00 until the presses are hot HomeShop;Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8
23 《北二 条小报》自办出版工作坊 Beiertiao Leaks self-publishing workshop 5月22－23日，周六到周一，早上10点开始直到印刷完毕 10.00 until the presses are hot HomeShop;Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8	24 从5月23日“大陆漂流”继续向武汉与重庆漂流，6月4日返回北京。如果你对我们下一步的旅行感兴 趣，请e- mail垂询： lianxi@homeshop.org.cn。 From the 23rd of May until the 4th of June, the Drift continues on to Wuhan and Chongqing before rounding back up in Beijing. If you are interested to continue with us on this leg of the journey, please inquire:lianxi@homeshop.org.cn.	25	26	27	28	29
30	31	1	2	3	4	5 “哪里哪里” 艺术空间将与大陆漂流参加者联合举办一个开放总结论坛。更多的详情稍候发布。 The Where Where Exhibition Space in Caochangdi will host a final forum with China Drift participants open to the public. More details to be announced. 下午3点开始 15.00 “哪里哪里” 艺术空间 朝阳区草场地村319-1艺术东区A区内 Where Where Exhibition Space No. 319-1, East End Art Zone A, Caochangdi

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关于“大陆漂流”About the Continental Drift project

漂流是一个开放性的实践研究项目，由布赖恩・赫姆斯与克莱尔・潘迪科斯特所发起。项目基于这样一个观察可得的事实，即全球化是根据政治和经济 力量的大陆性 区隔构成的。大陆漂流以自组织的研讨小组的形式，在纽约与萨格勒布进行，合作者包括了雷内・加布里，艾林・阿纳斯塔斯以及策展人集体WHW (What, How for Whom)。2008年，漂流以移动的形式，在中西部进行了为期十天的考察，自此以后，常有定期的短期旅行。 今年4月，克莱尔与布赖恩与阿根廷同志一道从罗萨里奥旅行到巴利亚・布兰卡，追踪南半球之后新自由主义弧的区域范围。现在我们与“罗盘”的同 志、以北京为 基地的合作者以及受邀的朋友们一起，将进行为期20天的讨论与交会，中国漂流会令大陆漂流项目将在全球化大潮中进一步做杯水车薪的努力。

更多关于“大陆漂流.中国”的参加者信息在：www.douban.com/group/topic/19783008/

The Drift is an open practice research project initiated by Brian HOLMES and Claire PENTECOST that begins with the observed fact of globalization structured along continental blocs of political and economic power. Continental Drift has taken the form of self-organized seminars in New York and Zagreb, with the collaboration of Rene GABRI, Ayreen ANASTAS, and the curatorial collective WHW (What, How and for Whom). The Drift took mobile form for a ten-day expedition around the Midwest in 2008 with regular short trips afterward. In April of this year Claire and Brian traveled with Argentine comrades from Rosario to Bahia Blanca, tracing at regional scale the post-neoliberal arc of the global south. With Compass comrades, Beijing-based collaborators, and invited friends on board for twenty days of discussions and encounters, the China Drift will bring the Continental Drift project one step closer to squaring the circle of global society.

For more information about the participants of the Continental Drift China, please visit:www.homeshopbeijing.org/blog/?p=2482

合辑 Selections

5月19日，周四，晚上7点开始
地点：家作坊，交道口北二条8号
Thursday, 19 May, 19.00
location: HomeShop, Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8

“合辑”是 一个聆听系列活动，2003年产生于芝加哥，目的是为满足音乐爱好者在学术界和吵闹的俱乐部之间的中间地带上彼此分享他们最喜欢的或最感兴趣的录音。最初 开始于芝加哥的一个实验文化空间“膳房（Mess Hall)”， 这一系列至少包括九个活动。在家作坊这期的“合辑”是第一次在美国本土之外举办。过去的主持人包括批评家Mike O’FLAHERTY，谈论关于 1984年的地下摇滚、艺术家Marc FISCHER表演音乐中的叫喊，作曲家Janice MISURELL-MITCHELL谈论关于先锋-古典传统、以及实验音乐家Gabriel SALOMAN谈论关于Crass的无政府主义朋克。通过适 当的音量和友好的讨论，“合辑”是另一种乐迷悦耳的完美去处。在今天晚上的节目中，艺术家兼作家王念华将播放两小时来自底特律和密西根的强烈 摇滚和真正黑人灵歌，在音乐方面，最具创造力的原创之一。

Selections is a listening event series born in Chicago in 2003 in answer to the need among music fans to share their best-loved or most intriguing recordings with each other, in the terrain between uptight academia and too-loud clubs. Beginning at Chicago's experimental cultural space Mess Hall, the series has included at least nine events. Selections at HomeShop will be the first in the series to take place outside the US. Past presenters have included the critic Mike O'FLAHERTY on the underground rock of the year 1984, artist Marc FISCHER on screaming in music, composer Janice MISURELL-MITCHELLl on the avant-classical tradition, and experimental musician Gabriel SALOMAN on the anarcho punk of CRASS. With moderate volume levels and friendly discussion, Selections is the perfect place to treat your ears to the fandom of another. For this evening's program, artist and writer Dan S. WANG plays two hours of intense rock and true soul from Detroit and Michigan, one of America's most musically creative regions.

西�[计划 The Journey West

5月21日，周六下午4点 
地点：钟楼湾胡同41号（钟鼓楼酒吧隔壁）
Saturday, 21 May, 16.00
location:  41 Zhonglouwan Hutong (next door to The Drum and Bell Bar)

作为“大陆漂移项目”的一部分，丝特芬妮・若芬堡和王念华将为他们那个名为“西�[计划”的合作旅行社项目开一个张。这个旅行社位于钟楼和鼓楼 之间， 将提供一个你连梦都没梦见过的“美国梦”一条龙服务。

As part of the Continental Drift program, Stephanie ROTHENBERG and Dan WANG will present a soft opening of their collaborative travel agency project entitled "The Journey West".  Located between the Drum and Bell towers, the travel agency will offer full service package tours of an "American Dream" that you haven't even dreamed of yet. 

《北二条小报》Beiertiao Leaks
5月22－23日，周六到周一，早上10点到印刷完
地点：家作坊，交道口北二条8号
Sunday & Monday, 22-23 May, 10.00 until the presses are hot
location:  HomeShop, Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8

北二条小报将于2001年5月22日至23日着手进行第二版的筹划及发行工作。以日报的形式为模板， 我们将再次把注意力集中在日常生活中的某一天。胡同里的新鲜事，天气状况，转瞬即逝的交易等等都是我们探索并试图记录的对象。 由于本次活动 与大陆漂流艺术项目正好同时举行，我们的记者需在运动中记录下自己所背负的种种。报道作为一种投射或敏锐感知的前提是它必须对读者的反应有某 种预判，通过模糊性，虚拟性与可能性达到对事件即时性的超越。
 
具体事宜：
从2011年5月22日开始，我们将相聚在家作坊北二条新闻/设计/印刷室，在此参与者们将各就各位，在实践中面对文本交织的瓶颈并探索隐匿 其中的突破口。 在活动结束前，小报将以丝网印刷的方式出版并准备好投放到读者手中。 我们欢迎您在这两天中随时到访，为《北二条小报》提供 文本，图像，信息，周边新闻，设计，工作，点心或灵感。 至于我们每个字的稿酬，你可以向任何记者打听：写作赚不来钱，但我们的工作是出于对 新闻事业的热爱，对吧？

Beiertiao Leaks continues with its second edition for a two-day workshop from 22-23 May 2011. In the tradition of the daily paper, we will again address the content of a single day. The local news, the weather, fleeting bargains and other phenomena are still to be sought out and documented. But in this edition, coinciding with the Continental Drift in Beijing, we must also record the baggage we bring with us as our correspondents go mobile. Reporting is a form of projection as much as of sharp perception, insofar as it organizes reception. Insofar as it follows stories beyond their immediacy, through ambiguity, virtuality and possibility. 

The Facts: 
Starting at 10am on 22.05.11, we will gather at the Beiertiao newsroom/design department/printing press in HomeShop, where participants will take their positions and weave together the unweavable. By the end of the two days, the edition will be silkscreen printed on-site and ready for distribution. You are welcome to come at any point over the weekend to contribute text, image, information, local rumors, design, labor, refreshments and/or inspiration. As for our rate-per-character, ask any journalist: writing doesn't pay. But we're in it for the lifestyle, right?
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 家作坊 HomeShop 
 北京市东城区交道口北二条8号，邮编：100007 
 Beijing 100007 Dongcheng District 
 Jiaodaokou Beiertiao, Number 8 

 T /// +86 010 8403 0952 
 W /// www.homeshop.org.cn  
       www.homeshopbeijing.org/blog 
       www.weibo.com/jiazuofang 
       www.douban.com/group/HomeShop/ 
 E /// lianxi@homeshop.org.cn 
       jiazuofang@sina.com 

 

a new york journal

I just reached home after two weekends in Chicago and the days in between in New York. I went for the CAA conference, or at least that was the excuse. The last time I was in New York was the fall of 2008. It was September, around when Barack Obama’s candidacy first started to take on a sense of inevitability. The stakes of the presidential election had been raised that very week with the $600 billion bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Creative Time’s Democracy in America Convergence Center opened over the days I was there and so did Signs of Change show at Exit Art. There was a sense of possibility in the air and in the season.

This time it was different. Signs of Change is now a wonderful book as well as an exhibition. A little more than two years into the Barack Obama administration, the United States is in the full grips of a conservative reaction. How appropriate is it that the only show I managed to see in a week in New York was AbEx in NY at Moma. Not that the AbEx artists were conservative (Motherwell’s Spanish Revolution elegies positively radiated with the vitality of revolutions, then and now), but the retreat into formalism, individual spiritual journeys, and abstract systems is a path that always stands in high relief in times when retreat from the political seems perversely reasonable from a survival standpoint. I was fortunate to walk through the show with one who knows about painting, my neighbor from Madison Derrick Buisch. True to myself, I found the drawings and work on paper as or more satisfying than the canvases. But as far as seeing other shows goes, fortunately this was New York, which meant I could see some cool and canonical things without having to go out of my way, such as…

 

The conservative climate of the nation was not in evidence at the conference. It being CAA, there were quite a few sessions that included a radical or leftist scholarship. My contribution to the conference was managing the production of the Radical Art Caucus newsletter and helping to distribute it on site. This year’s was the first issue overseen by me. The heavy lifting was done by Sam Gould of Red76, whom I drafted in by suggesting to him that we make it an issue of the Journal of Radical Shimming. Being a touch manic and always open-minded about audiences and opportunities, he jumped aboard. Sam, in turn, brought into the project (it had by this point become “a project”) our friend Mike Wolf. The two of them engaged in an extended Google chat done over two sessions about something they’re calling “critical imaginative communities.” You can read that chat here. 

Sam did the layout and the interior graphic art. I assembled the newsletter text and fed him the files. I composed and proofed the front page display text in hand-set wood and metal type, scanned it, and sent that to Sam for use in the layout. Sam had a line on a very reasonable printer in Queens, arranged for 1500 to be printed, and had the invoice sent to me.

 

Joanna Gardner-Huggett, our RAC secretary, took on the task of receiving the delivery at the hotel, right near the conference site. Over the days of the conference I called her probably ten or twelve times, trying to figure out how to pick up another bundle. The three co-presidents, Linnea Wren, Travis Nygard, and Kaylee Spencer, kept getting them from her, too. Joanna managed the central distribution point well and with good humor. Together we distributed nearly all at the conference. I blanketed the first Dark Matter session, and Alan W. Moore had the second Dark Matter session well-supplied. I started a couple of stacks going around in the jam-packed Centennial Session on Feminism. I passed them out at the Diasporic Asian Art Network meeting and at the University of Southern California reception. I got them into the hands of Margo Machida, Nicholas Mirzoeff, and Martha Rosler. Through run-ins, I got them to some of the friendly faces I first met at other conferences: Richard Meyer, Peter Mortonböck, and Helge Mooshammer. I got them to some people who are name-checked in the interior cascade of critical art players. They seemed to enjoy finding others they recognized in the jumble, and wondered about the names they didn’t know. 

JRS #12 definitely reached hundreds and hundreds of people in the field whom I do not know, and who possibly do not know any of us who were involved in the project. Also, the conference was a great place to make guerrilla placements, like at the book fair. In that sense, making use of CAA as a ready-made audience was a big success. At the same time, there could be some big improvements. For one thing, the listings info was incomplete in one vital area, announcing RAC’s Friday evening meeting and reception. Which, by the way, turned out to be organized as a terrific discussion with two visiting union organizers. I just didn’t have the information when we needed it for inclusion. And for another, the readability of the text in Sam’s radical art tribe graphic was compromised in some key places, which blunted the intended messaging. But no matter—we got it done and distributed, much to the expressed delight of many a conference goer, with only about three weeks lead time, a small budget, and only partial available attention. Not bad for a first effort, and in spirit very true to the best Red76 work.

Other highlights from those days included visiting the activist and videographer Dara Greenwald (who is taking it easy and slow while undergoing medical treatment), getting to see for the first time my collaborators Ryan Griffis and Sarah Ross present in a public event setting (along with Lize Mogel and Sarah Kanouse), and catching up with my crash-pad host Naeem (who was in full-press deadline mode). Oh yeah, and the Mubarak regime fell. That was crazy—sitting in sessions or hitting sessions with stacks of the newsletter while receiving Egypt update texts from Naeem, including a blow by blow account of the president’s final, intrasigient address to the nation.

Finally, I crossed the Whitestone Bridge for an overnight visit to Connecticut to see an elderly uncle who no longer travels. I had never driven that part of the country and was blown away by the many miles of decades and decades worth of suburban overflow from the city. Rolling past all the wealth, the northern end of what the Don Draper character once called “the Cash Belt,” all I could think of were prep school feeder populations and quiet desperation amid the boatloads of taste. The stone walls visible along the Merritt Parkway screamed affluence; the age and history represented by the hundreds-year-old wall work only come into play as a corollary to the modern day wealth of the area. Once in Cheshire, the village where my uncle has lived for 45 years, the blue collar returned to the landscape in the form of Aldi stores and Chinese buffets.

 

 

 

the mysterious fdl initiative movement, on black friday

The fdl initiative movement has come to life. The photo evidence comes in from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.  

A mess of students from UW-Fond du Lac with shared concerns and curiosities about their city and fellow citizens got organized, got smart, and got motivated. There were about thirty in all, led by the art students. Specifically, they wanted to creatively address the anxieties felt by some elements of the citizenry regarding the spectre of rising demographic heterogeneity. How to raise the issue while wearing an ideological poker face was part of their challenge.

While I have already related some of the recent happenings in town, a number of Wisconsin's other campuses have lately been hit with incidents of racist and/or homophobic vandalism. Beyond that, it is also important to remember that this part of Wisconsin has long been deservedly known as a conservative part of the state. Joseph McCarthy, from outside Appleton, is the area's most notorious conservative son, but in the general achievement category we would do well to remember that Ripon, just a few miles from Fond du Lac, lays a credible claim to being the birthplace of the Republican Party. So when it comes to addressing these issues, the fdl initiative movement is on the front lines in ways the critical artists of Chicago are not.

It being November, they decided to bring three questions to the public assembled in advance of Black Friday shopping. 

On t-shirts.

  



 They found large numbers of these People (Who Shop) exactly as they had known they would, outside big box stores in the early morning hours of Friday, November 26. fdl initiative movement workers invited persons who had nothing to do but wait, to consider the questions. Those who were willing wrote answers on the shirts.

I have not seen the t-shirt responses. As they'd expected "some are great, some funny, and some stupid," said John Scotello. Where the fdl initiative movement goes now is unclear, but at some point we need to see the t-shirts with responses. Though maybe it is premature to decide how, where, and when to show them, it is fun to think about. But the group has not put much attention to those questions just yet, having prepared for another venture out, as of tonight. Not Black Friday this time, but a regular Friday night. That means they likely will encounter the more familiar assemblage of the weekly Friday night watering hole rather than the once-a-year gathering of the People Who Shop. 

Earlier today I met with my language tutor. He is an anthropologist. During our practice session, in which I tried to explain the fdl initiative movement, it occurred to him that the exercise sounded like a kind of activist poetic anthropological research. If there is a creatively rigorous process of analysis after the "data" has been gathered, that may be an appropriate description. How and when the "researchers" make their agenda more apparent is what we now await.

All photos courtesy of fdl initiative movement.

  

they (winter) soldiered on...

One of these years the state of war in the US will finally end, even if it means the end of the United States itself. When that happens it will be reasonable to ask, what did GI resistance have to do with it?

It will be a fair question because it is a fact that right now, as the GWOT moves into its tenth year and elections have turned into contests between an ever more polarized split electorate, the public discussion about the war is deafening in its silence. 

In this dark time of establishment consensus, transparently desperate but entrenched as only capital and retrograde moralities can be, IVAW is one of the few consistent voices demanding that we Americans honestly account for the disastrous costs of these wars by ending them. Together with Just Seeds they broke that silence in poster and exhibition form this past weekend in Chicago in a collaborative project called Operation Exposure: War is Trauma. Nicolas Lampert posts a fine and inspiring report on the Just Seeds blog.

Info below~

Photos of the action are posted here. 

Exhibits:

A month-long window exhibit of the prints is on display at Co-Prosperity Sphere in

Bridgeport (3219 S. Morgan Ave, Chicago) and a print mural is installed at the In These

Times building (2040 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago).  The In These Times exhibit opens

on Thursday, December 9th at 5:00pm.

 

Museum show: Intrusive Thoughts at the National Veterans At Museum

Intrusive thoughts are unwelcome involuntary thoughts, images, or unpleasant ideas that may become obsessions are upsetting or distressing, and can be difficult to manage or eliminate. Although they are commonly unseen, there are silent signs of our current occupations in our local communities, households, and memories. This show features work by veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror that brings these signs from the shadows to the forefront and gives these traumas a voice in the political and cultural discussion of today.

 

National Veterans Art Museum

1801 S. Indiana Ave, Chicago IL

Nov 2010- May 2011

 

More information / contact:

Aaron Hughes

Iraq Veterans Against the War

http://www.ivaw.org

aarhughes@ivaw.org

entdinglichung...i have no idea what that means

Today I happened upon this site, led there by this image that came up in a search.

  
Being a total sucker for old graphic design, I followed it and discovered a page with many links to communist and left wing publications from the past in high quality scans. Many of the linked sites belong to libraries or other collections and archives. Most of the entries are in German, with French a close second. Spanish, Italian and other languages are present, as well. There are plenty of English language entries. 

I haven't taken the time to translate any of the site info itself because it is a bit overwhelming. Describing the page as "info-rich" would be putting it very mildly. But it is fun to click around, so check it out.

report on the hamilton wayzgoose

Mister Koppa and I made the trip to the first ever Hamilton Wood Type Museum Wayzgoose.

mister koppa with the wood border stamping machine

What’s a wayzgoose? Back in the day it was the end of summer bash thrown by the master printer for his shop underlings and apprentices. And now, I guess, it’s the kind of event the Hamilton staff put together for us–“us” being a gathering of type nuts, artists, letterpress printers, typographers, graphic and type designers. About 50 were in attendance. Mister Koppa and I were just about in the middle of the pack, age-wise. It was good to see so many young people turning out, seeing this as a living thing.

We were treated to power point presentations by Rich Kegler and Juliet Shen on the first evening. Juliet Shen told the story of working with Pugent Sound Salish tribes to design a font for the preservation and continuation of the Lushootseed language, which is down to ten or less native speakers, and having the font cut as a new wood type by Hamilton.

 

juliet shen and the lushootseed font design project

She had an elegant explanation for why she approached Hamilton about producing a new face in wood type, and in a language that does not use the straightforward Latin alphabet. She said simply, working and printing in wood type is better for getting the young people interested in learning to read, speak, and write in the language. 

The second day was organized around four different presentations, including a demonstration of the pantograph router by Norb Brylski, one of the old-timers from the Hamilton workforce. This man was a printer with his own shop first, and then after leaving that part of the trade spent years cutting wood type faces for Hamilton, in time becoming a master of the pantograph router, understanding all the nuances of the tool. This tool, in which the pantograph is machined to such a quality of stability and precision that it can be attached to a router run on pressurized air, was at the heart of the Hamilton production of wood type, and one of the main reasons decorative faces could be produced cheaply enough to be used widely in commercial printing. 

All throughout the demonstration people got to ask him questions. Most were of a technical nature. Paul Aken asked him about the shoulder height and depth of the counter (sorry, those are cast type terms). I asked him how they measured the productivity of each pantograph operator. He said that management had figured out a standard of output, so many fonts in a given face in a given size in a given amount of time. I can’t remember if he said it was all charted out or not, but that’s how I’m picturing the information. The reason this is crazy to think about is, this was a pretty skilled kind of work, including having to cut by hand every single inside corner to a sharp angle for many faces, because the router bits all leave a round corner. Quantifying all that across the room full of pantagraph operator-craftsworkers, such that the information could be figured into larger decisions regarding the future prospects of the company, was probably a typical industrial efficiency problem for the time. I think it was one of the Moran brothers who noted that over the decades there had been a great many women in this occupation. I also asked Mr. Brylski if he was in a union. He was; I think he said it was the carpenters and joiners union. 

Richard Zauft, under whom I studied about thirteen years ago, led a hands-on print session using for the first time the newly unveiled Hamilton face, Carter Latin, the first typeface designed by Matthew Carter for wood type. Matthew Carter has done just about everything a guy can do in the field of typography and type design, but it turned out he hadn’t ever designed for wood type. So this, too, was (for type nuts, at least) a pretty special moment, and super fun to do. Hundreds of proofs were made over the course of the day, including many on paper taken from a shop scrap pile, with entertaining results. Matthew Carter was there, presiding like a pleased patrician grandfather.

richard zauft, typographer

Jim Moran gave us a wonderful introduction to and status report on the recently acquired inventory of printing blocks from the old Globe company of Chicago. I don’t know what the proper name of the business was. It might have been Globe Print, or Globe Printing, or Globe Show Print. They were in the business of letterpress printed advertising. Movie posters, rodeo, car racing, and circus posters, and signage for grocery stores and small retailers.  And some political signage, including a lot of blocks for the old Illinois US Senator Dirksen. I’ve never seen anything quite like this, in terms of a fusion of material and social history. Who were these people in the 40s, 50s, and 60s who were going to rodeos, circuses, and scary movies? The whole thing had the air of a healthy working class world, with its own amusements and nascent consumer economy. Jim made the point that some of the circus posters that feature clowns are actually quite sinister, with the clowns playing as figures of chaos and menace. So what was life like for the classes of citizenry who consumed the thrills and contrived scares of the circus midway and freak shows? Who shopped at the stores that advertised their meat discounts in the windows? And whom Senator Dirksen wanted to reach? Lots to wonder about there. Unfortunately, not much is known about Globe. Jim is starting to get some leads on the company, people who may have been involved, but it sounds like that is in an early stage. 

partial posters in the men's bathroom, hamilaton wood type museum

The Hamilton staff and volunteers are slowly making their way through an estimated 1400 blocks, many of them damaged, and all of them having arrived in a completely disorganized state. The story is, the Globe company cleared them out and packed them for storage, but then they were somehow left in a tractor semi-trailer for 25 years, and practically forgotten. A whole bunch of type came along with it that they are also sorting. Some of the blocks are just amazing, and the proofing of them is what is a great motivation for putting in the labor. 

Most of the blocks are carved or cut vinyl. But check out this one, which is pure woodcut, handcarved.

from the globe collection, hamilton woodtype museum

 This place is the mecca of wood type, no question. For the letterpress printer, there’s interesting stuff at every turn.

 

just another amazing specimen sheet, hamilton wood type museum